Validation: How the Skill Set That Revolutionized Psychology Will Transform Your Relationships, Increase Your Influence, and Change Your Life - by Caroline Fleck

Part 1: What and Why

Validating will improve your ability to influence behavior, period. Failing to validate people will often render you totally ineffective, and in some scenarios, it will actually damage the person or relationship you hope to affect. Importantly, this connection between validation and change applies to yourself as much as it does to others—knowing how to self-validate will improve your relationship with yourself and the likelihood that you’ll actually succeed in making the changes you want to make.

Validation: communication that one is mindful, understands, and empathizes with another person’s experience, thereby accepting it as valid. Put simply, validation shows that you’re there, you get it, and you care.

Validation improves relationships by transforming how they feel: it increases trust, intimacy, and psychological safety.

Taken as a whole, the research is clear: validation is a surefire way to get people talking.

The paradox that those skilled in validating come to appreciate is that not only do we need to treat others the way we’d want to be treated, but we also must treat ourselves with the same kindness we’d extend to others.

“Should I respond with problem-solving or validation?” This question is intended to challenge one of our more endearing characteristics: we want to make things better. When someone is upset or comes to us with a problem, we want to take away their pain and help them find a solution. Unfortunately, as well intentioned as we may be, our efforts often backfire. Rather than solving problems, we make them worse. Instead of reassuring people, we invalidate their distress.

You can and should toggle between validation and problem-solving, responding with what you think is needed in the moment. But at any given time, assume you can offer only one or the other.

One’s ability to flexibly move between focusing on change and validation determines how successful they will be in either pursuit.

In a sense, validation is a kind of interpersonal mindfulness practice—rather than the breath or body serving as the anchor for your attention, as is common in traditional mindfulness exercises, your focus is on another person’s experience.

Empathy often gets confused with sympathy, which is understandable. I mean, we shouldn’t be expected to differentiate words that literally and figuratively rhyme! It doesn’t really matter if you confuse these concepts in conversation or when purchasing Hallmark cards, but for the purposes of validation, the differences between them are important: sympathy is a reaction to another person’s suffering or negative circumstances; empathy is about connecting with another person’s emotions, be they good or bad. Whereas sympathy means feeling bad for someone, empathy is feeling with them; sympathy looks down from on high and says, “That sucks”; empathy comes down to eye level and says, “I feel you.”

Note that experiencing empathy and conveying it are two different things.

Validation communicates that you’re mindful (paying attention), understand (see rationality in), and empathize with (connect with or care about) someone’s experience, thereby accepting it as valid. So what constitutes a person’s experience, and how do you know if it’s valid? For our purposes, a person’s experience consists of their emotions, thoughts, and behavior. Importantly, you do not need to validate each part of someone’s experience. One of the cardinal rules of validation is that you should only validate the valid. Remember, the negativity bias causes us to focus on what we dislike or find confusing. Your task is to search for the “kernel of truth”—what you consider reasonable—in another person’s experience, and validate it. If you’re struggling to find the kernel of truth, consider whether their emotions, behavior, or thoughts make sense in light of each other.

This emphasis on “only validating the valid” raises an important question: how do you know if someone’s thoughts, behaviors, or emotions are valid? Thoughts are considered valid when they are logical, based on facts, and grounded in reality. People are constantly making assumptions and interpretations based on the facts of a situation, and they inevitably arrive at different conclusions. As long as someone’s deductions are logical or plausible, you can consider them valid. Note: you don’t need to agree with another person’s perspective for it to be logical.

Valid behaviors are those that are appropriate in terms of cultural norms or effective with respect to the individual’s goals and the context (past or present).

Finally, emotions are always valid. Okay, maybe they’re not always valid, but it’s rarely effective to challenge people’s emotions, unlike their thoughts and behaviors.

Most of the obstacles you’re likely to run into with validation can be avoided simply by understanding what it is not.

• Validation ≠ Agreement

• Validation ≠ Praise or Approval

• Validation ≠ Problem-Solving

Validation communicates that “It’s okay.” Not, “It will be okay.” Affirming the former can position you as an ally; if you jump too quickly to the latter, you might very well become part of the problem.

Feeling judged translates to feeling misunderstood, and when we don’t feel like someone understands us or our problems, we’re not likely to trust their advice on how to change things.

Communicate validation only to the degree that you can do so authentically.

As you work on developing the skills in this book, you’ll find that validation is in many ways an exercise in dialectics. Looking for the kernel of truth in another person’s perspective, especially when so much of it seems “bad,” helps you see the reality between the black-and-white extremes your mind prefers. You will have to be more intentional about challenging your judgments. You can’t just write off someone as a jerk. Instead, you have to figure out what’s reasonable or valid in the jerk’s perspective, which will inevitably challenge your conclusion that they’re just a jerk.

Part 2: How

The Validation Ladder—Eight Steps to Seeing and Being Seen

Validation shows that you accept another person’s experience as valid through the mindfulness, understanding, and empathy you demonstrate. The Validation Ladder includes three subsets of skills designed to help you communicate these qualities. Each section of the ladder represents one of the three skill sets. The Mindfulness Skills at the bottom typically convey subtle forms of validation but are very accessible; the Empathy Skills at the top are super validating but can be trickier to pull off. And the Understanding Skills in the middle—well, they’re somewhere in between the Mindfulness and Empathy skills. When I talk about the strength and difficulty of these skill sets, I’m speaking in generalities. The Empathy Skills are generally perceived as more impactful than the Understanding Skills, which are generally more impactful than the Mindfulness Skills. There are exceptions to this rule, but on average, that’s how they shake out. Each skill set builds off the previous one(s) and achieves its aims: the Understanding Skills require and communicate mindfulness and understanding, and the Empathy Skills demonstrate mindfulness, understanding, and empathy, which is why they’re so powerful.

There are eight skills in total—two mindfulness, three understanding, and three empathy. Together, the skills in the Validation Ladder form the acronym ACCEPTED, which is how people will feel if you’re effective in using them.

Attend—The Game All Good Listeners Play

In a sentence, Attending means paying attention and listening without judgment in a way that shows interest and cultivates understanding. Attending conveys that you are “there”—physically, emotionally, and mentally—and that the other person is worthy of your attention, a subtle but powerful message.

Showing up is the language of intimacy. Do you RSVP to that party? Watch from the stands when your kids have a game? Offer to accompany a friend to their first AA meeting? Nonjudgmentally bearing witness to the experiences that shape a person’s life is the most direct way to validate their significance. These easy-to-dismiss moments can determine crucial features of our relationships, including whether or not we have them at all. Inattention, on the other hand, deprives our relationships of the nutrients they need to thrive; it’s also a swift way to invalidate others and is frequently weaponized for these purposes.

I hate being the bearer of bad news, but paying attention and demonstrating that you’re paying attention are not the same thing. The former is a cognitive process; the latter is an interpersonal skill. Even if you remain nonjudgmental and genuinely interested in someone, your attention won’t ascend to the level of validation if it’s not perceived as such. To consistently clear the Attending bar, you need to use nonverbals, listen, and ask questions and comment.

When it comes to nonverbal behaviors, some are better than others at communicating engagement. Fortunately, researchers have been geeking out on this stuff for years and have developed a sophisticated understanding of which nonverbals are most effective at signaling attention, connection, and safety. They refer to these nonverbals as “immediacy behaviors,” so-called because they reduce the psychological and physical distance between people. I’ve narrowed them down to the Big Four:

• Eye contact

• Proximity (standing close or leaning in)

• Gesturing

• Nodding

Listening demands your undivided attention. Attending (listening to validate someone) requires even more engagement: in addition to focusing on what’s being said, you need to fill in the blanks. Someone who’s trying to organize their thoughts in real time is limited by any number of constraints (working memory capacity, anxiety, needing to pee, etc.). Attending has you mentally join the other person in trying to make their point. You consider how the information they’re providing relates to other things you know about them or the world and try to develop an understanding that is more complete than what they’re able to construct for you on the fly. This type of engagement comes easily when you understand or at least care about the topic of discussion; it can be excruciatingly painful if you don’t.

I discovered a game I soon realized most good listeners were already playing. The A Game, as I call it, isn’t complicated; you just have to answer this two-parter:

• What’s a better way to make this person’s point?

• Why does it matter to them?

Rules: Don’t communicate your answers to the speaker. At least, not for the purposes of Attending. Like Sudoku or Solitaire, the A Game is one you play against yourself. It’s technically possible to win without saying a word. You can ask the speaker questions and make comments, but you’re limited to those that demonstrate interest or an effort to better understand their perspective.

To win the A Game, you must abandon the assumption that it’s the other person’s job to explain everything to you. Instead, it’s up to you to figure out their message and why it matters to them. The challenge lies in finding a better way of framing the other person’s point. This key element of the game is critical to overriding complacency and reining in your negativity bias. Our brains are quick to check one of the “I got it,” “That’s stupid,” or “I don’t care” boxes so we can go back to thinking about more important issues like, “What should I have for lunch?” or “Why don’t they talk about Bruno?” If you accept the challenge of trying to flesh out someone’s message, you move from passive judge to active participant. Notice that nothing says you have to agree with or like the other person’s perspective. Like a debate in which you’re given a random topic and need to argue a position, the A Game requires you to think in a way that engages you even if the subject matter doesn’t. The best validators all approach listening this way, not as the passive absorption of information but as the active construction of meaning.

For the purposes of Attending, your questions and comments must demonstrate interest or an effort to understand someone better. That’s it. Statements like, “What do you think they meant by that?” “Were you surprised?” and “Wow,” show interest, while “Can you explain that to me?” and “Say that again” communicate an effort to understand.

How you ask questions and make comments is as important as what you say. Enter, vocal cues. Consider the question, “Do you think you’re a good father?” Try asking this question as judgmentally and critically as you can. Okay, now try asking the same question but in a gentle and supportive manner. Do you hear a difference? Asked one way, perhaps with a soft tone, a slow speed, and a slight inflection on “father,” the question sounds thoughtful and curious. Said another way, with a sharp tone, a louder voice, and an emphasis on the “you,” this same question feels like an attack. If you’ve been accused of coming off as harsh despite not using language to that effect, you might be a victim of your vocal cues.

Anytime you change your natural speech patterns in response to someone, it shows that they’ve affected you. This means they have your attention.

Sticking with Attending will serve you well when you don’t understand or empathize with someone’s position. If you find yourself stuck in a conversation at Thanksgiving with an uncle who won’t shut up about his offensive political views, this is probably the only step you’ll be able to take toward validating him. Attending is also the way to go any time talking would be inappropriate. When you want to validate without interrupting the other person—think meetings, funerals, parent-teacher conferences, etc.—Attending is your best friend.

Using nonverbals, listening, and asking questions and making comments might seem foolproof, but these basic approaches can backfire. When Attending fails, it’s usually because of intensity or timing.

If you bring too much intensity to a delicate moment, you risk crumbling it. Intensity can be managed or corrected simply by reading the room. If someone seems ashamed, embarrassed, or insecure about a topic, dial back your questions and comments, don’t force eye contact, tone down your vocal cues, and take a step back—literally.

Attending to someone who doesn’t want your attention reflects a lack of awareness. It isn’t validating; it’s just annoying.

If it seems like people rarely open up to you or if you’re looking to rekindle a connection that’s gone cold, be intentional about finding times that are conducive to intimate conversation. After dinner, coffee dates, walks, late-night texts, and car rides are perfect scenarios for deep convos. You can expect a low return on investment if you approach people immediately before or after work, school, or other demanding activities because folks are typically focused on preparing or recovering from them. When you do get the spark you’re seeking, be careful not to blow on it too hard. Allow for silence, especially if it feels like the moment might slip through your fingers if you don’t keep stoking it with questions. If the other person changes the subject, try only once to return to it. If they don’t bite, let it go. People don’t open up in response to being pushed; they just become less likely to seek you out in the future.

PRACTICE TIPS

If you can commit the Big Four to memory and remember to lean into nonverbals in general, you should be good to go. You might put a reminder on your phone or fridge to cue you to be mindful of nonverbals this week, but don’t overthink what you’re doing in the moment.

A couple of the skills in the Validation Ladder are less intuitive and have aspects you need to drill to internalize. The A Game component of Attending is one of them. In my experience, playing the A Game usually starts to become second nature after about twenty-five repetitions. To develop your A Game, practice playing it in the following scenarios this week:

• Low-stakes conversations on issues you care about (e.g., talking to your partner about the podcast you’re both listening to).

• Low-stakes conversations on topics that aren’t of interest to you (e.g., talking to your partner about the Catan podcast they just finished).

• Low-level disagreements or conversations when you don’t understand someone’s position (e.g., talking with your partner about the I Hate Cats podcast they’ve been enjoying).

Hint: Remember to ask questions and make comments that demonstrate interest or an effort to deepen your understanding.

Copy—How To Connect With Anyone

Copying is the second of the two Mindfulness Skills, and it’s as straightforward as they come: You simply mimic or reflect a person’s words or behavior. This skill is most effective when combined with Attending questions and comments. For example, someone says, “That restaurant was the best I’ve been to in years,” while smiling. You respond, “The best in years?” matching their smile (Copying). “What did you order?” (Attending question). Some degree of summarizing and word swapping is fine, but Copying is most validating when it maps as directly onto what the person expressed as possible.

Copying, like all validation skills, affects the validator as much as it does the person being validated. Research has shown that the person Copied and the Copier both report more connection and a stronger emotional bond with each other.

You’ve got two main options when it comes to using this skill to validate others: Copy their words and Copy their ways.

Repeating the adjectives or exact descriptions people use can be particularly effective because these words are like the paint color they’ve chosen for a particular detail (e.g., “they’re in a beautiful park”). Repeating them confirms that you see what the other person sees and are aware of what strikes them as important. Copying the tone and stylistic approach someone uses in their emails and texts is another subtle way to Copy and signal attunement. And be sure to pay close attention to people’s use of exclamation points and emojis, because these convey the tone, intensity, and level of formality the individual is comfortable with. Summarizing or repeating the main points of a person’s argument also qualifies as using this skill, presuming you stick to what they said and not your interpretation of what they said. Copying reflects the other person’s position; interpretations, on the other hand, can muddle it. Again, you don’t have to agree with someone to restate their position.

There’s one last way to Copy for the purposes of validation that falls somewhere in between repeating what the other person said and mimicking their actions, and that is to give words to their actions. For instance, if Mat said “The house looks nice,” after I’d spent the day deep cleaning and organizing everything, I might appreciate the compliment, but I wouldn’t feel particularly validated. If instead he said, “The house looks nice. Wow, did you clean the windows?! They’re sparkling! And are those handmade labels in the pantry? That must have taken hours!” then I’d know that he was mindful of the time and effort I put in. Holding up a mirror to someone’s experience is an obvious, but often overlooked, way to show that you see them.

Why is Copying such a potent antidote for conflict? Because the challenge of trying to repeat someone’s points correctly forces you to slow way down. When you downshift from the high gear of generating counterarguments and preparing critiques to processing and Copying, you see things you would otherwise miss.

Relying on a gentle self-reminder to Copy, rather than obsessively monitoring yourself, will help you draw out your natural tendency to Copy without being obvious or forcing it. The only other thing to be mindful of is which behaviors you Copy. Never, ever Copy someone who is being aggressive, rude, or violent. Copying nonverbal expressions of sadness or distress (e.g., looking down, tearing up, etc.) can be validating; you just want to be careful not to cross the line into overwhelming someone. Copying ceases to be effective the minute the situation feels like it’s spiraling out of control. Signs of spiraling include looks of panic, distress, and uncontrollable sobbing. When this happens, stop Copying and start soothing.

PRACTICE TIPS

1. Use the prompt “Remember to Copy” to cue yourself to intentionally Copy someone each day this week. Put a virtual sticky note on your computer or an actual one on your mirror to remind yourself to do it.

2. The next time you find yourself in conflict, try the Rapoport intervention. You can do it formally by writing down what the other person says or informally by trying to keep track of their points in your head. If the person is an intimate partner or family member, you might try introducing the exercise to them so you both have the opportunity to be heard.

Contextualize—Solving For Why

Contextualizing acknowledges that a person’s reaction makes sense in some context—their physiology, history, etc.—even if it’s problematic or ineffective otherwise. In these situations, validation is based on the assumption that every effect has a cause. To Contextualize, you must first determine the chain of cause and effect that led to someone’s reaction and then communicate it. The chain doesn’t need to be elaborate.

Like the other Understanding Skills in this chapter, Contextualizing is based on logical reasoning. It requires deduction first and communication second. The moment you shift from judging someone’s reaction—our default, thanks to the negativity-bias devil—to solving for it, you increase your chances of being able to validate them. Contextualizing facilitates understanding by disarming two of its greatest foes: shoulds and fear.

Contextualizing is one way to put an end to the should show: “My son is twelve years old; he should be able to get his homework done without me constantly having to remind him!” No, he shouldn’t! You’ve been reminding him to do his homework since he was first assigned any. He hasn’t developed the skills to task-manage independently, and your reminders have saved him from ever having to deal with the natural consequences of missing assignments. “I should have stopped reminding him years ago.” No, you shouldn’t have! You didn’t realize reminders could be contributing to the problem until just now when I mentioned it. In theory, you could have had different information and resources and lived a different life, but you didn’t. You lived the life you’re living. And in the context of that life, your parenting decisions make sense. There’s a valid reason you’re doing the things you’re doing, and it’s not that you suck. The key to Contextualizing, and to challenging shoulds in general, is to remember that understanding ≠ approval. It’s not the same as condoning someone’s behavior, and there’s nothing to say that by accepting the current conditions, you sacrifice your ability to change them in the future. Explanations are not excuses.

Although it’s true that feelings affect our reasoning, it’s also true that reasoning affects how we feel. Determining validity requires an unbiased assessment of someone’s response. This thoughtful analysis leads to understanding, which is a catalyst for empathy and compassion. Recall that the Empathy Skills at the top of the Validation Ladder depend on understanding and will fail without it. In the context of validation, the mind is a conduit to the heart.

Fear tells us that rubbing people’s noses in their mistakes will prevent them from acting out again, but nose rubbing only makes them more dangerous. People are not pacified by shame; they respond violently to it.

You don’t encourage good behavior by convincing someone they’re bad. Instead, you must affirm that they’re a decent person who made a mistake. You may need to set contingencies and enforce consequences along the way, but this must be done alongside understanding, not in place of it. Identifying the valid reasons why someone did the destructive things they did helps them understand their reaction and ways to avoid it in the future.

Behavior doesn’t occur in isolation; it occurs in context. So in order to validate behavior that doesn’t make sense, you must find the context in which it does. In 1997, Marsha Linehan wrote a chapter on validation in a book about psychotherapy and identified three contexts in which problematic behavior may be valid: (1) the past, (2) misinformation, and (3) disorder.

Each person’s reaction is valid in terms of their conditioning, even if it’s not effective in the moment. I’m not suggesting that you should go around speculating about people’s histories or constructing stories about their past to make sense of their behavior. Assuming that someone’s relationship problems stem from “mommy/daddy issues” isn’t validating; it’s condescending. If, however, there’s an obvious connection between what you see in the present and what you know about someone’s past, then acknowledging it can have a profound effect. Validating someone’s behavior in the context of their history substantiates the acceptance you aim to convey. It says, “I see how the world has shaped you, and I don’t judge you for it.”

If you’re not aware of anything in a person’s past that would help explain their reaction in the present, you may still be able to Contextualize some part of it. As I discussed in chapter 3, someone’s reaction might be a valid response to invalid thoughts. And what’s the greatest source of invalid thoughts? Misinformation. When you are Contextualizing behavior in terms of misinformation, it’s not enough to identify the logical connection between the two. You must refrain from judging the person who was misled.

In addition to the past and misinformation, problematic behavior may be valid in terms of the biological dysfunction that’s driving it. If your brain is depleted of serotonin, you will feel and act depressed. If it’s flooded with dopamine, you’ll find it difficult to sleep. Even if someone’s behavior conflicts with their goals, it may still be valid in the context of an existing physical or mental health disorder.

PRACTICE TIPS

1. We tend to respond to problematic behavior with shoulds and judgments, so use these thoughts as cues to Contextualize this week. If everyone around you happens to be especially well behaved, imagine how you might Contextualize to validate obnoxious behavior you read about or see in the media. Think about what you could say to communicate your “given x, y makes sense” logic, and take special note of any judgments that pop up in the process (e.g., “I’m making excuses for them” or “They don’t deserve it”).

2. It’s most critical and difficult to practice Contextualizing when someone’s behavior is immoral or conflicts with your values, but you might not find yourself in these situations on a daily basis. To get some reps in this week, defer to the news or social media for examples of egregious behavior. If you don’t have the information you need to figure out the conditions that led to someone’s reaction, use what you know to draw some hypotheses about the circumstances that are most likely to have led them to do what they did.

Note: These are hypotheses you’re drawing, not assumptions. Hypotheses are held lightly, can be disproven, and are nonjudgmental; assumptions presume truth in the absence of proof. Generating hypotheses is how we come to understand the world; making assumptions is the surest way to distort it.

Equalize—The “Anyone In Your Shoes Would Do the Same” Skill

Equalizing communicates that a person’s response is reasonable or justified in terms of the current situation and normal biological functioning. It’s the “anyone in your shoes would do the same” skill. Like the other Understanding Skills, Equalizing comes down to logical reasoning and communication.

Recognizing that it’s common for people to cry after losing a loved one, for instance, doesn’t seem to take any mental energy. You just know their reaction is normal; you don’t have to think about it. There’s nothing wrong with relying on autopilot deductions, but to reach this skill’s full validation potential, you need to get comfortable using the Golden Rule approach, during which you imagine yourself in the other person’s situation to see if their reaction squares with yours: Golden Rule Approach Person’s reaction = how I’d respond Consider the distinction between registering that a person’s grief is understandable (default approach) and imagining how you would feel, what you would think, and what you would do after losing a loved one (Golden Rule approach). Big difference. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, even if it’s just through imagination, requires a higher level of cognitive processing that engages the brain’s visual, motor, and sensory systems. Research suggests that the practice of actively imagining another person’s experience allows us to better intuit their thoughts, feelings, and needs. This means that the Golden Rule approach you use to Equalize can actually help generate empathy.

Generally speaking, Equalizing in the first person—saying that someone’s reaction is equal to how you would react—is the way to go if you’re an authority figure or someone they look up to. Consider how deliciously validating it feels when a doctor puts themselves in your shoes by saying something like, “I would want a second opinion, too, if I were you,” or “If it were my kid, I’d do the same.” Yummy. The third-person comparison—stating that someone’s response is equal to how others would respond—may be more appropriate if you don’t know the person or their situation well. When I complain to my bachelor brother about how difficult it’s been to manage childcare this summer, and he says, “Yeah, all my friends with kids have been saying the shortage of camps this year is killing them,” I feel more validated than if he were to say, “Yeah, if I had a kid, I’m sure I’d be frustrated by the lack of options, too.”

However you go about it, if someone has been invalidated for having a normal reaction to abnormal circumstances, Equalizing can have a significant effect.

If you can do it, Equalizing is THE validation skill to use with someone who is being pummeled by perfectionistic standards.

Fortunately, there are only a few mistakes you can make when Emoting. The two biggies are (1) diminishing someone’s experience, and (2) invalidating strongly held beliefs.

Equalizing to validate teens provides an excellent example of how this skill can backfire. Adolescence is chock-full of firsts—first loves, first jobs, pubic hair! These new experiences grab the table that the “normal” kids have been sitting at all their lives and flip it upside down. Because so much of what they’re thinking, feeling, and doing doesn’t feel normal, they don’t necessarily want to hear that it is. Rather than validating the intensity and singularity of what they’re going through, Equalizing can reduce it to common. This holds true for anyone who is responding to a new or intense situation. If you’re worried about diminishing someone’s experience, all you need to do is validate the uniqueness of their situation. No matter how common it is, no two situations are exactly the same. Equalizing and validating the uniqueness of their situation allows you to demonstrate understanding without coming off like a know-it-all.

You’ll want to be mindful of invalidating strongly held beliefs anytime you’re in the Kafkaesque land of perfectionism. People who are invalidating themselves for failing to meet perfectionistic standards often internalize those standards as normal. Telling someone who is convinced they’re fat that their BMI is normal might invalidate their tightly held perception of themselves. If a negative self-image is central to how an individual sees themselves, they’re unlikely to feel seen by someone who challenges it. You’ll know if you’ve invalidated a strongly held belief because, well, the other person will act like you’ve invalidated them. Signs include them doubling down on their point, insisting, “You don’t get it,” and, if you’re in an old-timey movie, slapping you in the face. If you run into these types of reactions, back up and try to Contextualize. Someone with a distorted perception of normal is responding from a place of conditioning, misinformation, or, in some cases, disorder. Remember, if a reaction doesn’t make sense in terms of the current situation, try to find the context in which it does.

Caroline Qualifier: Sweetens the standard Equalizing message of “anyone in your shoes would react similarly” with “and you’re handling it better than most.”

PRACTICE TIP

Work on using the Golden Rule approach of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. When it comes to communicating your understanding, experiment with the first- and third-person approaches. Ideally, you’ll be able to practice Equalizing daily this week, but if you can’t, at least try putting yourself in another person’s shoes. Note: don’t assume you’re strong in this skill just because you’re emotionally intuitive or good at perspective taking. Understanding and communicating understanding are two different things.

Hint: Equalizing in combination with the Caroline Qualifier is a great way to reinforce young kids. Communicating that they’re behaving more maturely, independently, etc., than you would have at their age is tantamount to giving them candy. For example: “I can’t believe you got your chores done without me having to remind you. I would never have been able to do that at your age.”

Propose—How To Read Minds

Technically speaking, Proposing means stating what you think another person is thinking, feeling, or wanting to do based on what they’ve said and what you know about the situation. Proposing is often described as “mind reading,” but it’s more about reading between the lines.

By now, you know the drill: Understanding Skills can be broken down into logical reasoning and communication. With Proposing, you first have to draw some hypotheses about the other person’s experience; then, you need to share your oh-so-educated guesses without insulting or, God forbid, invalidating them.

The best way to get info on folks for the purposes of Proposing is to use the Mindfulness Skills. Specifically, Attending by playing the A Game and asking questions. Springboarding off of the A Game is the most logical way to approach Proposing: you collect data, draw some hypotheses, and then run them up the flagpole to see if the other person salutes. But you also can use the Golden Rule approach of putting yourself in the other person’s shoes to help you figure out what to Propose.

Imagine a dial with the word Idea on it. If you turn the dial to the left, your idea will be Proposed as a suggestion: for example, “Maybe you’re tired of having to work so hard to please your mother-in-law?” Turn it the other way, and it’s stated as a fact: for example, “You’re tired of having to work so hard to please your mother-in-law.” If you’re going for effect or want to project confidence in your understanding, state your idea more as a fact. To convey deference or respect for the other person’s experience, lean toward couching it as a suggestion. Note that roles, relationship dynamics, and cultural norms may also determine whether it’s more effective to state ideas as suggestions or facts.

Lead-ins like “maybe,” “I wonder if,” and “it seems to me” are on the suggestion side of the Idea dial; they sound less intrusive, authoritative, and presumptuous. Framing insights as questions can also help you stay in suggestion territory. Saying, “Do you think you’d go back to working full-time if you didn’t feel so guilty about leaving the kids?” sounds more curious and open to correction than, “You’d go back to full-time work if you didn’t feel so guilty about leaving the kids.”

Proposing suggestions instead of facts works well when validating someone who is easily influenced, tends to doubt themselves, or presumes you know more than they do (e.g., children), because these sweet, trusting souls may be more likely to believe your perspective over their own. Moving your Idea dial in the other direction by stating something as a fact is generally more powerful.

Stating your points matter-of-factly gives weight to them. It says, “This is how things are,” as opposed to, “Is this how things seem?” If what you Propose resonates with the other person, your certainty can take a sledgehammer to their doubt and insecurity.

Because it can take a couple of attempts before you Propose something that resonates with the other person, mastering this skill comes down to detecting and recovering from mistakes.

If someone responds to what you Proposed by getting defensive, correcting you, or arguing, then you got it wrong or you surfaced something they’re not ready to accept. In either case, the two of you are not on the same page. You need to better understand how they see things, but you can get there only if you stay in the conversation. The easiest way to stay engaged after striking out is to go back to playing the A Game and using Attending questions and comments.

I have to warn you that returning to the A Game after striking out with Proposing can feel counterintuitive. If someone comes off as defensive, annoyed, or invalidated by what you Proposed, your feelings might get hurt, which will incline you to either push your point or disengage. Fight or flight. Overriding your instincts can take some getting used to, but knowing which emotions to look out for—namely, hurt, embarrassment, self-doubt, and various shades of frustration—will make you infinitely better at spotting and challenging the urge to cut and run.

Nonverbal signs that someone feels validated by what you Proposed include them doing the following:

• Maintaining or making eye contact.

• Becoming more excited—speaking faster or louder, using more physical gestures, appearing more animated.

• Leaning in or moving closer to you.

The less obvious but far more reliable indication of how someone feels about what you Proposed is their facial expression. I’ve heard it said that “the eyes are windows to the soul,” but it should be, “facial expressions are windows to the soul.” Less catchy, I know, but far more accurate. Even more precise would be to say that “micro expressions are windows to the soul, but you may only be able to see them for like a millisecond because people are quick to cover them up.” Yeah, that’s never gonna catch on. Renowned facial expert Paul Ekman defines micro expressions as “facial expressions that occur within a fraction of a second.” According to Ekman, “This involuntary emotional leakage exposes a person’s true emotions.” I had to quote him verbatim because there’s simply no better way to say “emotional leakage” than “emotional leakage.” If you pick up on leaked negative emotions like disgust, fear, or contempt, then it’s unlikely the other person feels validated by you.

I’ll leave you with one last reliable way to tell if you failed or nailed your validation attempt. The tell is whether the person sticks with the conversation. If you did read their mind or, better yet, made a connection they hadn’t, they’ll want to extend the conversation. Validation feels good, and when something feels good, we want more of it. However, if what you Proposed made them feel awkward, uncomfortable, or invalidated, they won’t be motivated to keep talking. Even people pleasers will want to get the hell out of there. They might throw you a thoughtful, “I hadn’t looked at it that way,” so you can feel satisfied with yourself, but they’ll change the topic or abandon the conversation at the first opportunity. Similarly, if the other person has tried repeatedly to correct your understanding without success, they’ll eventually feel punished out of continuing the conversation and will drop it. The problem with relying on the Conversation Tell is that by the time you detect it, you might not be able to recover. Forcing a conversation with someone who has made it clear that they want to end it can make them feel unsafe. You should still attempt an Attending question or two after detecting the Conversation Tell, but be prepared to drop your agenda if they don’t engage. If you think you might have really done damage by invalidating the other person, say so, and apologize for the offense.

PRACTICE TIPS

Like Attending, Proposing requires more repetition than some of the other skills to master. Twenty-five reps is a great target for this skill and will help you internalize all the finer points in this chapter that you’re currently convinced you’ll forget. For this week (and beyond if you’re going for twenty-five reps), practice using the A Game and the Golden Rule approach to draw hypotheses about what someone might be thinking or feeling. Be sure to experiment with framing your ideas as suggestions and facts across different scenarios to get a feel for the difference. If Proposing makes you nervous, practice using it in low-stakes conversations about topics like sports, food, TikTok videos, etc., before attempting more serious or emotional discussions.

Take Action—When Words Aren’t Enough

Taking Action means directly intervening on another person’s behalf. Rather than offering solutions, or talking someone through how they might solve a particular problem, Taking Action has you step in to solve it for them. It’s the “put your money where your mouth is” skill, and, in some scenarios, it’s the only way to show that “you’re there, you get it, and you care.” As an Empathy Skill, Taking Action has you go above and beyond acknowledging (Mindfulness Skills) and thinking logically about someone’s experience (Understanding Skills). It requires you to invest yourself in the situation. The Empathy Skills achieve the aims of the other skills you’ve learned so far and go one step farther, transforming you from an observer into an active participant.

Problem-solving and intervening to solve someone’s problems (Taking Action) aren’t technically the same thing. Suggesting actions a person might take (e.g., “Maybe you should redo your résumé before sending out more applications”) is different from intervening on their behalf (e.g., “I redid your résumé for you; now maybe you’ll get more bites”). Problem-solving is a more passive attempt to change someone’s experience, while Taking Action requires you to actively invest yourself in the situation.

The main thing to consider before Taking Action is whether the person actually needs or wants you to step in. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as “when someone asks for help, help them” if the other person cannot do what they’re asking you to do. The problem with Taking Action is that it can quickly turn you into something no one wants to be: an enabler.

To Act or Not to Act: These Are the Questions (to Ask Yourself)

1. Does this person have the resources required to take whatever action is needed?

2. Would I be doing something they need to learn to do for themselves? If so, are they capable of developing the necessary skills?

3. Does the action conflict with my values?

Should you decide not to Take Action, don’t presume the other person will be scarred for life. Remember, a cardinal rule of validation is that you should only validate the valid. If you think the individual is capable of Taking Action themselves, you shouldn’t validate the belief that they can’t by intervening. Sometimes a person’s doubts are valid; occasionally, they’re not. Believing in someone who doesn’t believe in themselves can validate their capabilities and help them realize their potential.

The problem with Taking Action when someone hasn’t asked you to intervene is that you might make the situation worse. This usually results from misreading social cues. The person can’t take whatever action is needed, but they also don’t want your help, thank you very much.

Condescending, patronizing, presumptuous—these are just some of the ways you can come across if you Take Action when someone doesn’t want you to, despite lacking the skills or authority to intervene themselves. I’ll say it again: the higher you go up the Validation Ladder, the more it hurts when you fall. If you misread the interpersonal tea leaves and intervene where you’re not wanted, you can end up invalidating the other person and feeling misunderstood by them in the process. Fortunately, there’s a simple way to offset the chances of validation disaster in this situation: Ask before you act.

You can get a sense of the effect this skill is having by observing how the other person reacts. Gratitude, “How did you know?” expressions, and heartfelt thank-yous suggest your action was validating. Lack of acknowledgment, entitlement, or demandingness means this skill might be working against you. Yes, you aim to validate someone, not get a ticker-tape parade for your efforts, but if the person treats you worse over time, or you don’t feel good about yourself after intervening, back way off of this skill.

PRACTICE TIPS

Much of the intention and awareness required to Take Action effectively can be developed through reflection. Consider the following questions this week:

1. What are some ways in which you are currently Taking Action in your relationships? Note if the person can or cannot Take Action themselves.

2. What are some ways you have Taken Action in the past? Again, note if the person could or could not Take Action themselves.

3. How might you Take Action to validate the people you care about? You guessed it: note if the person can or cannot take whatever action you’re considering.

4. How do others currently Take Action to validate you?

5. How have others Taken Action to validate you in the past?

Emote—My Advice For Jimmy Kimmel

Emoting means openly expressing your feelings—specifically, the feelings you have in response to what someone has shared with you. You don’t need to exaggerate your emotions; on the contrary, Emoting is all about authenticity. It’s dropping whatever facade you’re maintaining and allowing yourself to have an unfiltered, genuine response to another person.

If you’ve ever been accused of taking yourself too seriously, you should give this one a try. You’ll inevitably discover that when you allow yourself to be as you are without pretense or posture, you create opportunities for others to do the same.

Emotions can be complicated and scary, but Emoting doesn’t have to be. It can be achieved through one of three modes of expression: nonverbal behavior, labeling, or implying.

Rather than trying to do anything specific when Emoting, focus instead on letting down your guard and leaning into your emotions as they arise. Emoting is a natural extension of the Golden Rule approach I discussed in the Understanding Skills. Putting yourself in another person’s shoes helps you connect with their emotions. Allowing yourself to uninhibitedly experience and embody those emotions is a way to demonstrate the empathy you’re genuinely experiencing.

When stating how you feel, be sure to stick with emotion adjectives—sad, angry, disappointed, excited, relieved, etc.—rather than thoughts, as you do when implying emotions (see below).

Last but not least, you can Emote by stating thoughts that imply emotions. You might say, “What a jerk!” to show that you’re angry about how someone was mistreated, or “Spit it out already” to express anticipation, or even, “I just peed a little,” which is what my best friend said in excitement when I told her I’d gotten engaged. Implying emotions allows you to incorporate humor (always a plus) and can be less jarring than stating your feelings outright, especially if the other person is “emotion-phobic.” Implying offers a safe, “we can talk about feelings without talking about feelings,” approach to Emoting.

Emoting can be a particularly powerful validation skill in situations in which you or the other person is “playing it cool” or inhibiting certain emotions.

People tend to play it cool when sharing vulnerable emotions like disappointment or when describing something that might be upsetting to another person. Even positive emotions like glee and excitement sometimes feel vulnerable because they can expose a person to judgment. In some ways, playing it cool by restraining emotions is an adaptive strategy—it allows people to evaluate if the person they’re confiding in is safe and comfortable with the conversation topic. Although this strategy may protect folks from judgments and awkward conversations, it also can deeply misrepresent their true experiences. By embodying the emotions another person is restraining, you can provide much-needed validation to someone who otherwise would not receive it.

Again, there are myriad cultural and contextual norms around Emoting that may cause it to backfire, the details of which are beyond the scope of this book. But I do want to highlight three Emoting mistakes you should avoid regardless of the context: coming on too strong, striking the wrong chord, and losing control.

Expressing emotions that conflict with what the other person is actually feeling can create an immediate disconnect. You might, for example, giggle at what you mistook for mild embarrassment but was, in fact, deep humiliation, or express frustration that is discordant with somebody’s grief. Unfortunately, if the other person cannot relate to the emotions you’re expressing, they’re unlikely to trust that you can relate to theirs.

The safest way to avoid making the mistakes mentioned above is through experimentation. Try expressing a toned-down version of your emotions, and see how the other person reacts. If they appear to loosen up and talk more, you might experiment with more intensity, presuming you can do so authentically. And although you shouldn’t presume that your feelings will overwhelm somebody who is upset or down, you should be careful about expressing them to someone who is highly distressed or in crisis.

To recover from mistakes, put your emotions aside, attempt a question or two to reengage the person, and try one of the easier validation skills.

PRACTICE TIPS

1. Studying audio and visual examples of this skill can help increase your awareness of how to use it effectively. Check out television and movie sources for ideas on where to find people Emoting and practice identifying the modes of expression—nonverbal behavior, implying, labeling—they use. Notice when characters Emote to communicate that “they are there, they get it, and they care” about another character’s experience, and take particular note of when these exchanges result in your own sense of validation. The films Good Will Hunting and Disney’s Inside Out provide some of the best examples of validation I’ve ever seen.

2. Try Emoting using nonverbal behavior, implying, and labeling emotions independently this week. You don’t have to inhibit the other modes if they arise naturally, but make a concentrated effort to use one of them. If you rarely have conversations that would justify Emoting, you can engineer them by asking a friend, colleague, or acquaintance how they met their partner, what they did after high school, or about any other major life transition. Remember, communication doesn’t have to occur in person. Emojis are the modern-day equivalent of nonverbal behavior.

Hint: For nonverbal behavior, imagining that the other person is hard of hearing can help you naturally engage nonverbal behavior like facial expressions and gestures. Reminding yourself that less is more can take the pressure off of implying emotions. Finally, if labeling emotions feels uncomfortable, you can start by stating an emotion as a fact that is not specific to you (e.g., “That is unbelievable” versus “I don’t believe that” or “How disheartening” versus “I’m disheartened to hear that”).

Disclose—The Power of Me, Too

Disclosure, or self-disclosure, entails sharing personal details about yourself that relate to another person’s experience or reaction. As a validation skill, Disclosure demonstrates that you conceptually and emotionally “get it,” that you’re able to connect with another person’s experience, having gone through something similar yourself. At the top of the Validation Ladder, Disclosure brings you face-to-face with the other person, showing them that you see yourself in them and allowing them to see themselves in you. Although not always high risk, self-disclosure often exposes our vulnerabilities, opening us up to potential judgment, rejection, and betrayal. I argue that it’s the simple act of taking these risks that allows others to see how much we care.

Occasionally, people dare to share their shame experiences with us. They might not say much, sometimes just allude to them, but even subtle nods to shame take guts. If you’ve experienced something similar to what they describe, you’re uniquely positioned to validate them via Disclosure. Disclosing that you can relate to someone’s shame experience is empathy at its best. It prioritizes someone’s need for acceptance above your fear of being rejected. As a validation skill, Disclosing sends a clear signal that not only do you see and logically understand another person’s experience, but also that you can emotionally understand and relate to what they’re going through. As a result, Disclosing a similar shame experience can end up invalidating the other person’s shame. Their connection with you isn’t lost; it’s deepened. You send the message that “Your truth doesn’t drive us apart. It brings us together.” This is one of the few exceptions to the “don’t invalidate people’s emotions” rule. Disclosing that you, too, have done x or identify as y, takes the secrecy, silence, and judgment shame needs to survive out at the knees. It says, “You’re safe to talk about that with me. I won’t judge you.” Put another way, “Your shame is not valid or useful here.” Brown defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.” Invalidating shame through Disclosure validates the other person’s worth.

Disclosing that you can relate when someone presumes you can’t allows you to swiftly cut through the barriers of their assumptions. It suggests that you’re not just one of those people who thinks they know what they’re talking about; having gone through something similar means you actually might know.

Disclosure cuts through the bullshit, grabs them by the shoulders, and says, “I don’t judge you; I get it.”

For me, the decision to Disclose or not comes down to effectiveness and tolerance. How confident am I that my disclosure will be effective in validating the other person, and can I tolerate any judgment or rejection that might arise if it’s not? Even if your Disclosure passes the effectiveness and tolerance test, there are still a bunch of mistakes you can make.

If the person you’re trying to validate tends to focus on the needs of others over their own or is highly sensitive, you’ve got to be extra careful not to let the conversation become about you after Disclosing. Highly sensitive people are, by definition, sensitive to emotional cues. They also tend to err on the side of attending to others’ emotions rather than dismissing them. Faced with an unclear signal (Disclosure) and the desire to meet other people’s emotional needs, they’ll almost always pivot from talking about themselves to talking about you. And they’re freakishly good at it!

For what it’s worth, the degree to which you feel comfortable Disclosing an experience for the purposes of validation can be a subtle indication of how well you’ve processed it.

PRACTICE TIPS

Disclosing is the trickiest validation skill to practice because it’s contingent upon other people opening up to you first. That means you’ll have to rely more on modeling—observing others Disclosing—to develop this skill. In theory, this should be easy. As the German sociologist Georg Simmel said, “all relations which people have to one another are based on their knowing something about one another.” However, just because people disclose on the regular doesn’t mean they’re always doing it to be validating. You want to become more aware of when Disclosure is used for validation. These are the situations to study, and you’ll need a finer comb to find them:

1. As with Emoting, you can look for examples of Disclosing in podcasts and on TV. Reality shows are often chock-full of Disclosing scenes; they’re gold to producers who can use them to develop characters and relationships in one fell swoop. Social media is also good for examples of people Disclosing for the purposes of validation, albeit not always successfully. Finally, and most important, reflect on examples from your own life—times when you felt validated by someone’s Disclosure or perhaps uncomfortable because of it.

2. Experiment with low-level disclosures. Start to get a feel for sharing details about yourself while swiftly returning the focus of the conversation to the other person. For example, “Love the Pistons hat! I’m a huge fan. Who’s your favorite player?” As you get increasingly adept at this skill, experiment with making more vulnerable Disclosures.

Part 3: Where Change Comes In

Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes—Behavioral Change Strategies

Classical and operant conditioning are two of the driving forces that determine if, when, and why people (and animals) change their behavior. Both processes rely on the power of association. Classical conditioning affects involuntary behavior. Operant conditioning affects voluntary behavior.

Shaping means reinforcing incremental progress toward a desired behavior. You look for the teeny-tiniest improvement in someone’s current behavior and then reinforce it.

I want to highlight one of the biggest mistakes people make in trying to reinforce others: they confuse rewards with reinforcements. For a reward to be considered a reinforcement, it needs to affect behavior.

Negative reinforcement is not what you think. By that, I mean it’s not punishment. The “negative” in negative reinforcement does this term a real disservice. Despite being “negative,” negative reinforcement feels good to the individual receiving it because it takes away something aversive or undesirable.

Rather than providing reinforcements for desired behavior, extinction reduces problematic behavior by eliminating the reinforcements that are maintaining it.

Finally, punishment is an aversive consequence for a behavior.

Every single person wants to feel accepted and seen. Period. If someone doesn’t respond positively to validation, it’s because you haven’t actually validated them. Just as you wouldn’t doubt that an animal needs food, don’t question a person’s need for validation, and don’t judge yourself for desiring it.

The Universal Love Language—Validation in Intimate Relationships

Ignoring principles of change doesn’t make them go away; it just increases the chance that they’ll work against you. In intimate relationships, the principle we’re most punished for overlooking is punishment. Parents are mindful of punishment with kids because they use it intentionally and talk about it openly: “You’re gonna get a time-out” or “She should lose screen time if she doesn’t finish her homework.” In intimate relationships, punishments tend to be inconspicuous and are often unintentional. You may not have meant to punish your partner for doing the grocery shopping imperfectly, but when you discovered they forgot the milk and rolled your eyes, that’s exactly what happened. The insidious nature of punishment allows it to build up like an undetected carbon monoxide leak that slowly loosens each partner’s grip on reality.

The key to avoiding punishment and fostering change in your partner is to think in terms of small hops or steps and validation. Yes, a grown-ass man should be capable of showing up on time, but your grown-ass man isn’t. Accept where you are. Showing up less late than usual is progress. Reinforce it. Or at the very least, don’t punish the improvement. Here’s where validation becomes invaluable. You might not be able to say that you’re glad your partner was still a few minutes late, but you can authentically validate their increased effort and intention to be on time. The beauty of validation is that it forces you to focus on the valid, no matter how imperfect it might be.

Validation is how you disagree with your partner without disrespecting them. My other tip on channeling validation during conflicts is to give your partner the benefit of the hurt. The more upset someone becomes, the more hurt you can presume they are. You don’t need to agree with the other person’s narrative to see that their response to it is real.

Anger is often a secondary emotion, meaning it’s a reaction to another—aka primary—emotion. With anger, the primary emotion is often fear. A lot of my work with couples comes down to helping them see the fear through the anger they’re directing at each other.

Everybody Hurts—Self-Validation

You’d expect people’s negative core beliefs to be as diverse as the experiences, cultures, and upbringings that inform them. Au contraire. Research suggests that the invalidating beliefs people maintain about themselves generally fall into one of three categories: helplessness (e.g., “I’m needy”), unlovability (e.g., “I’m defective”), and worthlessness (e.g., “I’m toxic”). Our experiences might differ, but the emotions we feel and the ways we invalidate ourselves are common.

Seeing the error in your ways isn’t the same as invalidating yourself. Self-invalidation occurs when you adopt a harsh, self-critical stance toward your mistakes or perceived shortcomings (e.g., “I’m such an idiot”) or internalize them as character flaws (e.g., “This makes me unlovable”). Judging, dismissing, trivializing, or doubting your emotions and internal experiences also constitutes self-invalidation.

In response to the virtual house party of negativity that results from self-invalidation, we either try to avoid thinking about the situation that led to our emotions or get bizarrely defensive—with ourselves—in an attempt to justify whatever we thought, felt, or did. The result is a ruminative cycle that might seem like introspection but couldn’t be farther from it. Whereas introspection is intentional and nonjudgmental, rumination is obsessive, uncontrollable, and incriminatory. Introspection fosters growth; rumination stifles it. Self-validation, on the other hand, is an accepting response toward one’s suffering and the mistakes, urges, compulsions, addictions, transgressions, and shortcomings that contributed to it. Rather than raising doubts about or minimizing one’s own internal experiences, self-validation affirms them.

Because you’re communicating with yourself, a couple of the skills from the Validation Ladder won’t apply. Reading your own mind isn’t particularly meaningful, so you can take Proposing off the list. The same goes for Disclosure, presuming you’re not moved by hearing things you already know about yourself. The six remaining skills—Attending, Copying, Contextualizing, Equalizing, Emoting, and Taking Action—are the steps to self-validation, and you’ll move through all of them. Rather than using whichever skills feel natural and accessible to you, self-validation has you begin with the Mindfulness Skills and progress sequentially through the skills as I’ve listed them. Although mindfulness is the starting point, you can return to these skills whenever you get distracted or overwhelmed. If it feels cheesy or unnatural to direct certain skills to yourself, remember, that’s why you’re doing this. Learning to tolerate and evolve past the discomfort takes time and patience. As with any new skill set, the more you practice, the more you’ll take to it.

In self-validation, the Mindfulness Skills help you feel your emotions without feeding them.

Step 1: Attending

To Attend, you’ll again use nonverbals, listen, and ask questions to cultivate awareness. Rather than signaling that you’re paying attention, you want to communicate acceptance right out of the gate. The Big Four nonverbals won’t help you here, but opening your palms, relaxing your body, and deepening your breath will. These nonverbal cues counter the fight/flight/freeze response your body assumes when it’s trying to protect you. Through the remarkable channels of biofeedback, your nervous system will start to get the message that it can relax and decrease its resistance to the enemy, which in this case is you yourself.

For the listening component of Attending, you’ll use a modified version of the A Game to help you get to the heart of what you’re experiencing. When it comes to yourself, the “heart” will always be the emotion(s) surrounding whatever problem you’re grappling with. So instead of asking, “Why does this matter?” the question you need to answer is, “What am I feeling?” Easier said than done.

To Attend to your emotions, you must filter out the judgments, negative interpretations, projections, and other thoughts that seem like feelings but are really just reactions to them. Feelings are called feelings because you can feel them. Try to locate the emotion in your body, and sit with it. When you’ve identified an emotion, label it using an emotion adjective to help differentiate it from the hacks.

Step 2: Copying

To help sustain mindful awareness under these conditions, Copy or repeat the emotion. Saying it out loud or writing it down can help increase awareness by engaging more parts of the brain. To protect against overidentifying with the feeling, describe it using “this is” as opposed to “I am” language (e.g., “This is anger,” as opposed to “I am angry”). Despite the emphasis on “self,” self-validation helps you recognize the humanity in your suffering. The personal narrative that tries to attach itself to your emotions creates the illusion that you are alone in your experience. “Nobody could possibly relate to my strange cocktail of symptoms and limitations.” Beneath the illusion that you’re different is the reality that you’re human.

The Understanding Skills focus your attention on facts, not fault, so you can examine the validity of your emotions without spiraling into shame and blame. Note: I discuss Contextualizing and Equalizing separately, but in practice, you can toggle between them.

Steps 3 and 4: Contextualizing

With Contextualizing, you’re again looking for the trail of cause and effect that leads to a reaction. Here, the reaction you’re solving for is your emotion and the facts to consider are the circumstances that may have prompted or exacerbated it, including past events, misinformation, and disorder. The “past” includes events in the recent past like having received a disparaging email from a colleague and vulnerability factors like having skipped lunch or not having slept well.

Assumptions and judgments are often misleading, so you can consider them misinformation for this exercise. Don’t chastise yourself for making assumptions or having judgments; simply recognize them for what they are and how they affect you. Contextualizing acknowledges the conditions that contribute to your emotions without blaming yourself or others for them.

Steps 3 and 4: Equalizing

To Equalize your emotions, look at the facts beneath the perfectionistic standards and expectations you’ve internalized. Ask yourself, would I judge a friend for feeling what I’m feeling in this situation? How would I respond to a loved one if they were in my shoes?

The Empathy Skills help you respond to your suffering with kindness and channel it toward something constructive. If it’s confusing to think about applying empathy to yourself, you can replace the term with compassion, or compassionate empathy as it’s sometimes called.

Step 5: Emoting

In self-validation, the emotions you express toward yourself are care and compassion. Once again, you will rely on verbal and nonverbal communication to Emote. Note: don’t be fooled into thinking you can skip Emoting because you’re too cool for self-talk. You’ve been talking to yourself for decades, just not very nicely.

Touch—be it through hugs, held hands, or patted backs—is among the most common nonverbal ways we demonstrate care for others. In self-validation, you’ll use similar gestures to comfort yourself. Everyone’s relationship with their body is different, so experiment with various gestures to find one that feels comforting and supportive to you. Examples include the following:

• Hugging yourself while stroking your arms

• Placing one hand over your heart

• Patting or resting one hand on your stomach

• Cradling one hand in the other

When speaking to yourself, focus on phrases that are simple and kind. Avoid self-affirmations like, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me.” The intention is to express tenderness toward your emotions without trying to change them. Examples include the following:

• This is hard.

• I forgive you.

• May I accept what I cannot change.

• I love you.

Step 6: Taking Action

If you take your emotions seriously, it stands to reason that you should respond seriously to them, too; self-soothing and making meaning are two ways to do so. The gateway to self-soothing is through the senses—taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound. Examples include drinking warm tea, taking a bath, lighting candles, tidying your space, and listening to relaxing music. These activities are intended to make your suffering easier to bear, not deny or amplify it.

Accepting suffering doesn’t mean it will subsume or define you; through acceptance, you can define it. Taking Action has you channel the tender emotions you’ve been holding in ways that bring meaning to your life.

SELF-VALIDATION EXERCISE

Practice this exercise during periods of distress or vulnerability. I highly recommend writing out your responses to the questions until you’ve memorized the process and can go through each step without getting distracted. If you get distracted at any point in this practice, use the Mindfulness Skills to ground you.

Mindfulness: What Am I Feeling?

Step 1: Attend

• Squeeze all your muscles and then open your palms, relax your body, and deepen your breath.

• Ask yourself, “What am I feeling?” Focus on where you experience the emotion in your body, and label your feelings using emotion adjectives (frustrated, scared, sad, etc.).

Step 2: Copy

• Pull your attention away from any thoughts that arise, and return your focus to your feelings.

• Repeat “This is [emotion you identified]” to yourself like a mantra, or write down the phrase.

Understanding: Why Am I Feeling This Way?

Steps 3 and 4: Contextualizing and Equalizing

Contextualizing: Consider the larger context in which your emotions are occurring—the past (recent and distant), misinformation (including assumptions and judgments), disorder, etc.

• Equalizing: Ask yourself:

• Would I judge a friend for feeling what I’m feeling in this situation?

• How would I respond to a close friend if they were in my shoes?

Empathy: How Can I Show Care and Compassion Toward Myself?

Step 5: Emote

• Experiment with various forms of gentle touch. Examples include the following:

  • Placing one hand over your heart.

  • Hugging yourself while stroking your arms.

  • Touching or gently rubbing your stomach.

  • Cradling one hand in the other.

• Speak kind words to yourself as though you were comforting a friend. Use simple and comforting phrases like, “I love you,” or “This is hard.”

Step 6: Take Action

• Self-soothe by attending to your five senses.

• Do something that reflects your values, such as attending to others, creating art, exercising, or reading. Note: choose something you weren’t already planning to do.

Appendix: The Validation Ladder Cheat Sheet

Mindfulness Skills

Attend: Show that you’re paying attention and listening without judgment.

• Use the Big Four: eye contact, proximity, gesturing, nodding.

• Play the A Game by asking yourself:

  • What’s a better way to make their point?

  • Why does it matter (to them)?

  • Ask questions and comment.

Copy: Mirror someone’s reaction.

• Mirror their words.

• Mirror their ways.

• Put words to their ways.

Understanding Skills

Contextualize: Acknowledge that a person’s reaction makes sense in some larger context.

Consider if problematic behavior is valid given:

• The past

• Misinformation

• Disorder

Equalize: Communicate that a person’s behavior is equivalent to how others would react.

• Use the Golden Rule approach to foster understanding.

• Speak in the first person if you’re a peer or authority; use the third person to show deference.

• Consider adding the Caroline Qualifier: “and you’re handling it better than most.”

Propose: Say what you think another person is thinking or feeling.

• Use the A Game, Attending questions, or the Golden Rule approach to generate ideas.

• State your idea matter-of-factly or as a suggestion, depending on your level of confidence and the relationship.

Empathy Skills

Take Action: Intervene on someone’s behalf.

They cannot intervene themselves:

• Consider the To Act or Not to Act questions:

  • Do they have the required resources?

  • Can and should they learn to do this themselves?

  • Does the action required go against my values?

• Ask (for permission) before intervening.

If they can Take Action themselves:

• Remember your intention, and be prepared to back off.

Emote: Express your genuine reaction.

• Use nonverbal behavior.

• State thoughts that imply emotions.

• Label your feelings using emotion adjectives.

Disclose: Confide shared experiences.

• Focus on shared observations, not the singularity of your thing.

• Return the conversation to them after sharing.

• Use low-level Disclosures to determine boundaries.